10/21/2022
In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt considered inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner. It would be the first time in American history that a black man had ever dined as a sitting president’s guest.
But Roosevelt hesitated. He was scared. Scared of what his Southern relatives might think. Scared of what the newspapers would say. Scared that racist voters would abandon him, that he would lose support in the South, that it could cost him the election. But in the end, it was precisely because he was scared that he did it.
“The very fact that I felt a moment’s qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself,” Roosevelt said in a letter, “and made me hasten to send the invitation. As things turned out, I am very glad that I asked him, for the clamor aroused by the act makes me feel as if the act was necessary.”
It’s not a perfect rule but it’s a pretty good one: Do the thing you are scared to do. Because where we experience resistance, hesitation, reluctance is often evidence of progress or the potential for it. That tinge of self-preservation is the pinging of the metal dictator going off. We may have found something.
Challenge yourself. Do something that scares you. Do the thing you’ve been hesitating about. They say not to take counsel of your fears, but that’s exactly what you are going to do today: listen closely and then do the opposite.
